I really want to share with you these web 2.0 applications that will be useful in your classes. If you don't think you can't take the most out of them, let me know or share new ones with me and other teachers. Thanks!
CLASROOM 2.0
I just want to start this section talking about CLASROOM 2.0, a social networking for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education. You can find a great variety of resources for the class and meet other teachers willing to share and create contents related to ICT.
VOICETHREAD
According to Voicethread about page, it is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or phone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too. Users can doodle while commenting, use multiple identities and pick which comments are shown through moderation. VoiceThreads can even be embedded on web sites and exported to MP3 players or DVDs as archival movies. With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. All with no software to install.
You will see hereA beginner's guide to VoiceThread, a website for commenting on images and videos.
Let's have a look to the following article at wdil.org(Web Designs for Interactive Leaning) by Mike Hogan related to flashcardfriends:
Flashcard Friends is a free educational social network focused on creating, sharing and studying anything with online flashcards. You can copy existing flashcard decks and modify them to suit your needs. Include text pictures and sounds in your flashcards. You can even record right into the cards directly, which is ideal for learning languages. Then it generates tests and corrects your answers. Free to use, no advertisements, child-safe.
Teachers are getting their entire class on the site. Then they post flashcards for the class and the students can test themselves. Early studies show an increase of 12.3% percentage points on tests, more that a full grade better.
Some of the website’s functionality:
Create flashcards with text, pictures and sounds (ideal for foreign languages)
Four different learning modes: find one that fits you, or use them all
Automatically looks up definitions for you
Does automatic translation into a variety of languages
Auto-magically creates tests from the flashcards and then corrects them
Uses social networking to manage sharing card decks
Find existing flashcards by subject, school, teacher, book and more
Speak into your computer and add the recording to the cards instantly
Turns a spelling list into spelling flashcards with a spoken version of each word
Includes web 2.0 technologies like user ratings, bookmarking and tagging
This web 2.0 aplication has a great potential for collaborative classroom creation, editing and publishing of books. Great variety of layouts, including text and images.
Mixbook’s Education Program offers teachers:
• A secure online environment that values the safety of children and students
• The capability to create high-quality books that students and family will love.
• A web tool that is easy to learn and even easier to integrate into the classroom
Teachers can use Mixbook’s creator to design yearbooks, share classroom memories or even create research projects for classroom presentations. Mixbook gives teachers the tools needed to make teaching in the classroom easier and more engaging for students.
Click here to know more about Mixbook: opinion, tutorial, classroom uses, and classroom example.
Would you like to watch a video on how to use mixbook.com? Click here. Or simply try this 30 second mixbook demo.
FLICKR
If you think photos may be an interesting topic for your students in the clasrrom, FLICKR is what you were looking for. Click here to see and use a photos data base with creative commons licence.
PRONUNCIATION
I do think it might be a useful tool for the English class. The students will improve their pronunciation through an interesting and funny application designed by Media Semantics. It is very easy; the only thing you or your students have to do is to write what you want to hear (in the gadget), click on the arrow and the virtual teacher will do the rest. Enjoy!
AIML CHAT
AIML CHAT is another Media Semantics gadget that lets you and your students chat with an AIML robot called ALICE. She will answer back everything you ask her from a text box.
E-CARD
Media Semantics offers us this page that lets your students send a personal character greeting (written and spoken text) to their friends or schoolmates in the classroom.
LIP-SYNC
Con este artilugio podemos grabar nuestra voz (o subir un archivo grabado) y dejar que la repita el personaje qu
SITEPAL
If you want to know hoe to pronounce a word just go there and a virtual character will pronounce it for you! Click here.
VOKI
According to Voki, this online service enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using a talking character. You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters… animals, monsters, anime etc. Your Voki can speak with your own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or phone.
Voki lives on your blog, social network profile and will soon be integrated in various instant messaging platforms. You will also be able to download it to most video supported phones.
YAKITOME
YAKiToMe! is a free website that turns any electronic text into an audio book podcast. YAKiToMe! reads your documents with male and female voices in multiple language at whatever speed you specify. The website outputs mp3 and wav files and XML podcasts ready to download to your iPod or equivalent. YAKiToMe! has an extensive free library of ready-to-download audio books, RSS feeds, and user-community content.
Finally, click here to read information about the 5 best free online Text to Speech Converters.
WEBPOSTER
This tool allows educators to create a lesson, worksheet, or class page and immediately publish it online. Teachers can also set up classes and assign projects to students. Students complete the assignments by creating their own online projects or reports. Teachers and students can even add images and links to their pages.
ACAPELA.TV
Acapela.tv transforms written text into spoken words in real time, opens up new, unexpected, ways to communicate. The Internet user types in his/her own words which are vocalised in real time by Acapela. A single click brings the message to life and gives it meaning, as immediate and effective as the spoken word.
Welcome on Acapela.tv happy chatty webiste. A great meeting place for nice characters that finally can chat, speak for real and play with words, the way they like.
WORD SEARCH MACHINE
Word Search Machine: Add your own words and in minutes this tool will build you a fun and unique word search puzzle that you can print and share.
CLASS MARKER
The ClassMarker online testing website is a professional, easy to use online quiz maker that marks your tests and quizzes for you. You simply create your quizzes and your learners or business clients take them online.
ENGLISH EXERCISES (ESL PRINTABLES)
ESL English Exercises: A new tool which allows teachers to create online exercises (quizzes, tests, crosswords,etc). Registering is required (free).
Web 2.0 Applications for English Teachers
Table of Contents
I really want to share with you these web 2.0 applications that will be useful in your classes. If you don't think you can't take the most out of them, let me know or share new ones with me and other teachers. Thanks!
CLASROOM 2.0
I just want to start this section talking about CLASROOM 2.0, a social networking for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education. You can find a great variety of resources for the class and meet other teachers willing to share and create contents related to ICT.
VOICETHREAD
According to Voicethread about page, it is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or phone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too. Users can doodle while commenting, use multiple identities and pick which comments are shown through moderation. VoiceThreads can even be embedded on web sites and exported to MP3 players or DVDs as archival movies. With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. All with no software to install.
You will see here A beginner's guide to VoiceThread, a website for commenting on images and videos.
Click here to watch the video: An introduction to Voicethread
FLASHCARDS
Let's have a look to the following article at wdil.org(Web Designs for Interactive Leaning) by Mike Hogan related to flashcardfriends:
Flashcard Friends is a free educational social network focused on creating, sharing and studying anything with online flashcards. You can copy existing flashcard decks and modify them to suit your needs. Include text pictures and sounds in your flashcards. You can even record right into the cards directly, which is ideal for learning languages. Then it generates tests and corrects your answers. Free to use, no advertisements, child-safe.
Teachers are getting their entire class on the site. Then they post flashcards for the class and the students can test themselves. Early studies show an increase of 12.3% percentage points on tests, more that a full grade better.
Some of the website’s functionality:
Click to see a demo video
MIXBOOK
This web 2.0 aplication has a great potential for collaborative classroom creation, editing and publishing of books. Great variety of layouts, including text and images.
Mixbook’s Education Program offers teachers:
• A secure online environment that values the safety of children and students
• The capability to create high-quality books that students and family will love.
• A web tool that is easy to learn and even easier to integrate into the classroom
Teachers can use Mixbook’s creator to design yearbooks, share classroom memories or even create research projects for classroom presentations. Mixbook gives teachers the tools needed to make teaching in the classroom easier and more engaging for students.
For more information about Mixbook for Educators, visit http://www.mixbook.com/edu
Click here to know more about Mixbook: opinion, tutorial, classroom uses, and classroom example.
Would you like to watch a video on how to use mixbook.com? Click here. Or simply try this 30 second mixbook demo.
FLICKR
If you think photos may be an interesting topic for your students in the clasrrom, FLICKR is what you were looking for. Click here to see and use a photos data base with creative commons licence.
PRONUNCIATION
I do think it might be a useful tool for the English class. The students will improve their pronunciation through an interesting and funny application designed by Media Semantics. It is very easy; the only thing you or your students have to do is to write what you want to hear (in the gadget), click on the arrow and the virtual teacher will do the rest. Enjoy!
AIML CHAT
AIML CHAT is another Media Semantics gadget that lets you and your students chat with an AIML robot called ALICE. She will answer back everything you ask her from a text box.
E-CARD
Media Semantics offers us this page that lets your students send a personal character greeting (written and spoken text) to their friends or schoolmates in the classroom.
LIP-SYNC
Con este artilugio podemos grabar nuestra voz (o subir un archivo grabado) y dejar que la repita el personaje qu
SITEPAL
If you want to know hoe to pronounce a word just go there and a virtual character will pronounce it for you! Click here.
VOKI
According to Voki, this online service enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using a talking character. You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters… animals, monsters, anime etc. Your Voki can speak with your own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or phone.
Voki lives on your blog, social network profile and will soon be integrated in various instant messaging platforms. You will also be able to download it to most video supported phones.
YAKITOME
YAKiToMe! is a free website that turns any electronic text into an audio book podcast. YAKiToMe! reads your documents with male and female voices in multiple language at whatever speed you specify. The website outputs mp3 and wav files and XML podcasts ready to download to your iPod or equivalent. YAKiToMe! has an extensive free library of ready-to-download audio books, RSS feeds, and user-community content.
Finally, click here to read information about the 5 best free online Text to Speech Converters.
WEBPOSTER
This tool allows educators to create a lesson, worksheet, or class page and immediately publish it online. Teachers can also set up classes and assign projects to students. Students complete the assignments by creating their own online projects or reports. Teachers and students can even add images and links to their pages.
ACAPELA.TV
Acapela.tv transforms written text into spoken words in real time, opens up new, unexpected, ways to communicate. The Internet user types in his/her own words which are vocalised in real time by Acapela. A single click brings the message to life and gives it meaning, as immediate and effective as the spoken word.
Welcome on Acapela.tv happy chatty webiste. A great meeting place for nice characters that finally can chat, speak for real and play with words, the way they like.
WORD SEARCH MACHINE
Word Search Machine: Add your own words and in minutes this tool will build you a fun and unique word search puzzle that you can print and share.
CLASS MARKER
The ClassMarker online testing website is a professional, easy to use online quiz maker that marks your tests and quizzes for you. You simply create your quizzes and your learners or business clients take them online.
ENGLISH EXERCISES (ESL PRINTABLES)
ESL English Exercises: A new tool which allows teachers to create online exercises (quizzes, tests, crosswords,etc). Registering is required (free).